Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.

Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.

Christmas is forced upon a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press; on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred.

Every drunken skipper trusts to Providence. But one of the ways of Providence with drunken skippers is to run them on the rocks.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.